ABSTRACT
Hybrid fire simulation (HFS) is an innovative method which couples the numerical simulation of the global structure with physical element testing to study the global behavior of structures. In this paper, HFS is applied on a steel structure as the benchmark. The focus of the current paper is to study the thermal coupling, i.e. the heat flowing from the physical element comparted in fire to the adjacent substructures which are not directly exposed to the fire. As a proof of concept, two automatically interactive numerical models are developed in this paper, one of which represents the experimental substructure and the other is the numerical model of the global structure analyzed in a fully-coupled thermal-stress analysis. Therefore, the change of mechanical properties due to the thermal effects in the element subjected to fire as well as the adjacent elements is studied, that allows a more rigorous investigation of the thermal coupling phenomenon.
